Linus Torvalds comments on the Russian Linux maintainers being delisted

I know this will get flagged and I'll get called a Russian despite being an American from flyover country: Yes, one definitely can tenably make that argument.

The Monroe Doctrine, ironically, was precipitated by negotiations with Russia[1] and is almost identical in its aims for the Western Hemisphere as Putin's nominal arguments against NATO expansion eastward, namely the assertion that the Western Hemisphere was closed to European colonization and settlement.

Is this Putin talking about NATO expansion? 'Finally, you have broader considerations that might follow what you would call the "falling domino" principle. You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. So you could have a beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences.' No, it's Dwight Eisenhower talking about communism in Indochina in 1954. The maxims "Principiis obsta" and "Finem respice" apply universally.

The Monroe Doctrine and Domino Theory were both framed as defensive policies that were then used for protectionist and geopolitical justifications for foreign wars of aggression against neighbors and neutral independent countries. Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya didn't even have the protection of these broader geopolitical aims, just naked warmongering and profiteering (Osama Bin Laden was Saudi).

The necessity for narratives of moral exceptionalism to maintain a permanently jingoist state is to be expected, but it'd be healthier for the intelligentsia to privately admit that fact rather than hiding behind moral exceptionalism even in their personal lives. The West wants to permanently de-fang and colonize Russia for obvious reasons--geopoltical hegemony and market intrusion. These reasons create a perennial playbook everyone else has played by for thousands of years. And I'm sure when NATO does inevitably fail to a novel power, the remnants will play by the same rules Monroe and Putin played by, sed Carthago delenda est.[3]

[1] https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/monroe-doctrine

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domino_theory

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carthago_delenda_est

People are going to troll you for saying that, but there's a lot of people who silently agree. Anyway, good on you, same here.

Good post.

I think we have to look at the intentions of NATO. Has it ever been to take over and enslave another nation like Putin’s? I’m not talking about colonial Europe or America, I’m talking about the last 70-80 years, roughly the average lifetime of a human. Now look at the history of Russia in that time frame, aggression after aggression, belligerence the whole time with its neighbors.

Whataboutism?!? Is a thread critical of Russia? How is it possible?